Who Moved My Cheese?

The road side crepe in Paris looks delicious. I ask my mandatory question to the vendor who looks like he will understand my question, "Is the chicken halal?"

"No."

"Then can I have a cheese and egg crepe?"

"The egg is halal, but the cheese isn't."

While I am perplexed at what constitutes a halal egg or cheese, here are two men, one from France and one from Bangladesh, standing there on the brink of a major lactical, er, tactical decision bound to influence the French economy by 3 Euros – cheese-it or Brexit. 

I go for the cheese and egg crepe. To the best of my knowledge, there is no such thing as a non-halal cheese, let alone a non-halal egg. 

Mmmm! A piece of Dhaka in Paris as I bite into what is the closest I can get to the comfort food of Bangladesh craved by this weary traveler – the beloved omelet, fried poneer (cottage cheese) and burnt red chili with rice. 

I therefore find it amusing that master chef Nadiya Hussain of The Great British Bake Off fame says on The Guardian, "My mother [of Bangladesh] never bought any [cheese] because there was none in Bangladeshi cuisine."

I guess the screaming street vendor or the door-to-door salesmen (from the pre-apartment days) screaming "Ei, poneeeer, poneeeer!" doesn't 'sound' quite as classy as the feta or cheddar or mozzarella cheese and surely something not to be nibbled at during 'hobnobbing with the right people' to win a Nobel prize.

But when she adds that "the concept of dessert doesn't exist in Bangladeshi cuisine", all hell breaks loose on social media, perhaps more so due to the Ramadan invoked lack of otherwise overloaded sugar in the blood streams of the local boys and gals in Bangladesh. 

No dessert in Bangldeshi culture? I thought even the religiously non-inclined all of a sudden gets very pious about observing the Sunnat after a meal – gotta have something sweet. No dessert after a square meal, and we have a mob of sugar starved Incredible Hulks, "Don't make me hungry [for dessert], you won't like me when I'm hungry!"

And you want to know about my household growing up? No dessert? No problem. Dad takes a tea spoon (table spoon if outside the peripheral vision of mom) of raw sugar, so what if there are ants running around in the sugar pot. And us kids? We would suck at the makeshift hole of the Blue Cross condensed milk can just like a hungry calf does with the udders of its nonchalant mommy cow. Ah! Blue Cross, our sugar laden gastronomical Red Cross.

Even the Taka 11 a month school lunches provided by my pre-SSC government school fetched us a gratifying kalo jaam, bhundia or jilapi after a paratha meal. And I'm not talking about this during the era of Shaista Khan, but a mere 2 decades ago. Even the government knows where to apply major subsidies wisely to keep the adolescent hormones calm.

Still not convinced that we are a dessert craving people? Just go out on the streets of Bangladesh now – jilapis are selling like hot cakes. Nah, that's too 'cheesy' a 'sugar' coated Anglicised term. It's jilapis selling like hot piajus. Ah! I salivate. 

But, heartiest congratulations in order to Nadiya for being the one to bake Queen Elizabeth II her 90th birthday cake. You make us proud, though we had nothing to do with your success other than that your ancestors at some point moved from Sylhet to UK. But that's our habit, we will boast of you as being one of us even if you don't know us or our cuisine. We will buck you up as you reach higher and higher grounds. We continue to be your ardent cheer leaders, albeit not hot looking, well shaped ones jumping with colorful pom-poms, but rather, colourful ones holding well shaped and hot jilapis and poneer. And I assure you, we will not be jumping, but sitting, thanks to a stuffed tummy. Oh, and that's sitting on chairs, as did our fathers and their fathers and their fathers. Hope that addresses the other thing you said on The Guardian: "There were no chairs in Bangladesh…" unless  you meant from the time around when the wheel was just invented. 

Here's an idea for the next potential winner of The Great British Bake Off – a really sugary cheese cake in the shape of a chair…

The writer is an engineer at Ford & Qualcomm USA and CEO of IBM & Nokia Siemens Networks Bangladesh turned comedian (by choice), the host of ABC Radio's Good Morning Bangladesh and the founder of Naveed's Comedy Club. 

E-mail: naveed@naveedmahbub.com